


Untitled

by krazikrys



Category: Backstreet Boys, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Autopsies, Character Death, Crime Scenes, Crossover, Evidence, Las Vegas, Murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2020-09-18 21:51:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20320072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krazikrys/pseuds/krazikrys
Summary: Phi Mulligan has a rare night off from the crime lab. She uses her time to go see her favorite group, the Backstreet Boys. While deciding to blow her forthcoming paycheck at the high stakes tables, Brian Littrell sits down next to her. After about an hour of playing, both their phones go off at the same time. Phi is called to the very hotel/casino she is standing in. Only then does she realize that Brian's wife Leighanne is the vic and they are there to find the killer. With Grissom and Greg's help, Phi sets off on an investigation that will challenge her beliefs in the band and her place at the Las Vegas Crime Lab.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place August 27, 2005, during the Never Gone tour. It also takes place between seasons 5 and 6 of CSI.
> 
> Don't know the Boys. Never met them. No harm in this. But dang it was fun crossing these two over!

Phineas Mulligan sat alone at the high stakes blackjack table at the Mandalay Bay. She had split her hand a while ago and yet continued to play two hands. The five thousand dollars in chips that sat before her stayed put and only varied slightly as she played a hundred on each hand. It was her night off and payday was in about four days. She had been to a concert earlier and because she was a night owl by habit and because she worked the graveyard shift, she didn’t feel like going home. Instead, she felt the need to sit at the table and play cards just to kill time before she left. Her long dark hair was up in a ponytail and the tee-shirt she wore was from the concert. As she sat there, her eyes on the cards, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Tipping her head slightly towards the person who had tapped her, she mumbled, “Hm?”

“Mind if he plays next to you?”

Phineas lifted her eyes to the dealer slowly and then turned them towards the man off her left shoulder. He was slightly taller than six feet, dark skin, a tee-shirt stretched taught against his muscles. His hair was cropped short against his scalp. “Free country,” she commented dropping her eyes back to her cards.

The muscular man leaned down and said closer to her ear, “You clean?”

The phrase caught her off guard. Phineas lifted her eyes back to the man beside her. She caught a glimpse of the man standing behind him; auburn hair, head slightly tipped forward and down. She recognized him instantly as Brian Littrell from the group Backstreet Boys. They had played earlier; she had been at their concert. They obviously didn’t have anywhere to be anytime soon if they were staying over in Vegas. Things now made sense to her. Of course, his personal bodyguard would ask questions and be hanging around too. “I work for the Las Vegas crime lab,” she replied carefully. “He’s probably safer with me than he is with you.” This statement must have placated the man because he nodded curtly and took a step back. He said something to Brian and then stepped away.

“Name’s Phi,” she said as a way of introduction and then folded on the hand she had off to her right. Brian sat down beside her and she ignored him as she finished her one hand in front of her and looked at the dealer. “Tanya, you think he’s ready to play with the high rollers here?”

The dealer, Tanya, in her dress shirt and vest looked at Phi as she slid over her winnings. “Are you going to quit playing games at my table?”

Phi glanced at Brian and saw him chuckle. “Oh, it’s on, honey.” Tanya had obviously caught on to Phi’s strategy of keeping her money close. But then again, she stalked Tanya through the Bay about once a month, always near payday. Usually on payday, if she was off, Phi was playing at a casino off strip. She wasn’t a hardcore gambler but enjoyed the subtleties of twenty-one. Plus she could sit there and look like she was interacting when she wasn’t. That was why she avoided the other table games: too loud, too much interaction. Blackjack allowed her to do all her communication without saying a word. And being Las Vegas was a twenty-four-seven town, when Phi had a bad day at work or pulled so much overtime she couldn’t see straight, she would usually go find a casino off Strip and drop a couple hundred just to clear her head.

The pair didn’t say anything as they played for about thirty minutes. Phi was engrossed in the cards, lost in what she was doing. Slowly her five grand pile of chips grew and Brian’s pile shrank. Phi shot a small smile at the dealer who was finally seeming to enjoy herself. In her pocket, Phi’s phone chimed and beside her, Brian’s rang. It made both players jump at the sounds. Phi looked at her cards again, sighed, having realized she was going to lose this hand anyway, opted to finish and then look at her phone. Brian, having already busted, looked at the caller ID on his phone and then stepped back from the table a step. Phi watched him from the corner of her eye as she also lost and let Tanya take her bet before nodding saying she was out. Tanya slid her a plastic bucket for her to put her chips into. Phi saw Brian take a breath before hanging up his phone. He hadn’t said much but “Hello.” The conversation had only lasted a minute. Phi busied herself putting her chips in the container and waved at Brian as he headed off towards the way he had come, his bodyguard racing to catch up to him. 

Taking that moment to glance at her phone, Phi saw the text message: “419 possible 405 Mandalay Bay.” She didn’t need to look at who it was from. She knew. “Guess this means my night off is canceled,” she said to Tanya before nodding at her and heading off to the cage to cash her chips. After collecting her winnings, Phi tried to appear nonchalant as she hurried out to her car. She didn’t need to give the eyes in the sky anything to think that she was up to something, especially if something had happened in that very hotel that she was standing in. Once in the parking garage, she hurried to her blue Honda Accord and stashed her cash before grabbing the black button-down shirt on the front seat and popping open the trunk. Locking her car, she went around to the back and pulled out the black case and set it on the ground by her feet. Closing the lid to her trunk, she made sure she heard it click, before reaching down and snapping open the case. There on the top was her ID badge. Phi slid her keys into her jeans pocket and then, with the badge in one hand and the shirt thrown over her arm, she picked up the case and walked towards the main entrance of the hotel.

Entering the brightly lit area with light-colored floors, Phi squinted. She stepped off to the side and set her case between her feet. Sliding the button-down shirt on, she quickly tucked the tee shirt into her jeans and began buttoning the dark-colored shirt. She was almost done with it when she realized in her haste she had missed a button at the bottom and had to start all over again. Starting at the bottom, she started rebuttoning her shirt as she heard footsteps approach. Holding her breath, she looked up, glad to see Greg Sanders walking up with his dusty brown hair. It was longer now, hanging around his forehead. “You got here quick,” he commented, taking in the concert tee-shirt Phi was attempting to hide.

Phi shrugged as she did the last button, the second to the top, on the collared shirt. “So did you.” Clipping her badge to the pocket on the shirt she looked at Greg. He was in a gray polo shirt and slacks. Phi twisted her hair up into a bun and secured it with a second hair band she had her pocket. When Greg didn’t reply, she simply added, “It was my night off.”

A minute later, through the doors, came their supervisor, Gil Grissom. He was in a black polo shirt and gray slacks, almost completely opposite of Greg. His salt and pepper hair and dark, close-cut beard gave him an imposing look, especially to the two younger crime scene investigators. Without saying a word, he walked past the two young investigators and headed towards a bank of elevators, his silver field kit by his side. The two rushed to catch up with him. The silence loomed as they waited for an elevator to arrive. Once the ding signaling the arriving car broke the silence, the polished doors opened. The three scientists stepped inside, turning around silently, Phi, intentionally stepping slightly behind Grissom. The supervisor pressed a button on the wall by the doors and the doors slid shut. “You both know Vegas brings out the celebrities,” Grissom said in a near monotone without preamble.

Greg smiled slightly. “Yeah, we’re third in line behind L.A. and New York when it comes to celebrity sightings.” 

Grissom didn’t reply. Instead, the silence continued to linger a bit longer until the elevator reached the floor they were to be at and another audible ding was heard. “Welcome to your first high profile case,” Grissom finally said as the doors opened to the hotel floor.

Even though it was after one in the morning, the hotel floor was teeming with people. There were random people standing around in different outfits, from shorts and tee shirts as though they had been asleep to fully clothed. There were Las Vegas Metro Police Department officers standing around talking to others or just hanging around watching what was going on. Grissom led the way down the hallway past people. He kept walking until he came to a stop in front of a balding man in a suit coat. Phi looked around at the people nearby. Seeing shirts similar to the one she had on underneath her dress shirt and lanyards with badges, she sighed. She knew what floor they had gotten off on. She leaned over to Greg, who had also come to a stop behind their leader. “It’s a good thing I saw this concert tonight.”

“Why’s that?” he asked, looking around at the people in the hallway, not making a connection.

Phi set her case down and glanced around Grissom at the yellow crime scene tape blocking the door to a suite behind the detective he was talking to. “This tour is about to get canceled.”


	2. Chapter One

Phi focused her attention back to the crime scene and the conversation that was taking place between her supervisor and the police detective. Detective Jim Brass looked at the three analysts and nearly smiled. “Dragging along the fresh meat?” he intoned.

“What have we got, Brass?” Grissom asked of the balding man by the door, ignoring the comment. Phi and Greg exchanged glances.

Brass sighed. “Thirty-six-year-old female, identified as Leighanne Littrell, was found by Nick Carter in the bathtub in his suite. She apparently committed suicide.”

Phi closed her eyes momentarily before glancing down the hall. There were six men there. Phi recognized five of them as the Backstreet Boys. Tall, dark-haired Kevin Richardson was leaning against the wall. Beside him was Howie Dorough, also dark-haired, but with an olive complexion. He had his arm around AJ McLean who had a walking cast on his foot and was leaning against the wall with only his heel on the ground. Nick Carter stood in the middle of the hallway. He had blonde hair and was tall. He definitely looked shaken. He kept shaking his head back and forth as if that would erase the memory from his head. And beside him stood the man Phi had been down in the casino with not ten minutes before, Brian Littrell. He had his son, Baylee, on his left hip. The little curly-haired blonde boy had his head laying on his father’s shoulder. Brian stood there, gently rocking back and forth from foot to foot, a completely blank expression on his face. The one man she didn’t recognize was slightly older, wearing a white tee-shirt and shorts with glasses perched on his nose.

“The coroner’s already pronounced,” Brass continued. He lowered his voice. “To be honest, Gil, I’ve seen a lot of grieving husbands, but none like this. The kid who found her, yeah, he fits the bill, but the husband, well, he hasn’t said a word.”

Grissom nodded. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Greg, you’re with me. Phi, you get the husband.” Phi stood there flabbergasted, while Greg and Grissom lifted the yellow tape on the door and ducked underneath it.

Walking into the room, Greg looked around, staring at the opulence. “This suite is bigger than my apartment,” he stated, whistling.

Grissom ignored him and continued through the living space and bedroom and into the bathroom where an LVMPD officer stood by the door. He slowly set down his field kit by the door and Greg followed suit. Nodding at the officer, Grissom stepped into the bathroom where coroner’s assistant David Philips was leaning over the body in the bathtub. He wore dark blue coveralls with the words Coroner stitched on the left. He also had on a navy blue hat that said Coroner as well. His glasses were slipping down his nose. “What’ve we got David?” Grissom asked.

David looked up from what he was doing and said, “Liver temp is about ninety-five degrees. Livor mortis has just set in and she is just starting to go into rigor. So I would say she’s been dead about two to three hours.” David reached up with a latex-gloved hand and pulled open her right eye, “We've got petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes, indicative of suffocation, but there’s a gash on her left wrist indicating she attempted suicide.”

Grissom looked over at Greg. “Thoughts?”

Greg shrugged. “Women generally commit suicide either in the tub or by pills. Easier clean up for the family.” Stepping closer to the tub, he added, “Besides, if she had committed suicide, where’s the blood?” Grissom nodded.

The two investigators waited as David signaled the two other assistants from the coroner’s office to come in and prepare the body for transport.

Phi stood outside the crime scene tape and tried to gather her thoughts. How was she going to interview the man she had just been down in the casino with? Sighing, she felt Captain Brass lay a hand on her shoulder. “Starstruck?” he asked.

Phi shook her head. “No. Just thinking, that’s all.”

He led her over to the group of men. As they approached, the man with the glasses stepped forward and began talking rapidly, “How long is this going to take? We’re supposed to be leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

Brass held up his hand. “Mister Stevensen?” he asked. The man nodded. “Just give us some time right now. This is a fresh crime scene. Let our people do their jobs, please.” He then turned to the group of men and said to the man holding the sleeping child, “Mister Littrell, this is Phi Mulligan from the crime lab. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Brian carefully handed his son off to Kevin before stepping a few feet further down the hall with Brass and Phi. Phi realized what Brass was doing when he purposefully placed them facing the direction of the crime scene. The coroner was going to be moving the body soon and he was trying to keep the husband from witnessing that.

“Mister Littrell, when was the last time you saw your wife?” Brass asked.

Brian closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them and stared at Phi. “We had an appearance before soundcheck. She was there with Baylee. After that, we went to soundcheck. She left after the party was over and I haven’t seen her since.”

“What about after the show?” Phi asked, following up Brass’s question.

“I changed in my cousin’s suite, then went down to the casino.”

Brass glanced at Phi before inquiring, “Were you guys having any problems?”

“No,” Brian answered flatly. “Everything was fine.”

Phi took the moment to actually look at Brian. He looked the same as he did down on the casino floor, but now she was actually scrutinizing him. She had barely looked at him when they were at the table together. She saw a dark spot on the front of his blue shirt. “How did you get blood on you, Mister Littrell?” Phi asked.

Brian looked down at where Phi was staring. “I don’t know,” he shrugged.

Phi set her kit down. Keeling in front of it, she opened it, pulling out a brown paper bag and a Sharpie permanent marker. Glancing up at Brian, she said nonchalantly, “I’m gonna need your shirt.”

Brian stared down at her before he peeled his light blue shirt off of his body. Phi was relieved to see a white tank top underneath. Granted, Phi was speechless upon seeing the tattoo on his left bicep. He dropped the shirt in the paper bag for Phi who sealed it and documented the contents of the bag on the outside. “Do you mind if I search your suite?”

“Not at all. Go ahead,” Brian shrugged.

“Care to show me where?” she asked. Brian nodded and led her down the hall to the room next door to Nick’s suite. Nodding her thanks, she set her field kit down just beyond the doorway and slid on a pair of latex gloves before she grabbed her digital camera. It was a Sony 10 megapixel with a standard zoom lens. She had a two-fifty-six gigabyte memory card in it so that she would never have to worry about running out of space on her camera during a crime scene. And with the printers they had in the lab, photos wouldn’t take but half an hour to upload and print, instead of having someone in a darkroom developing film and enlarging prints.

Phi started with overalls of the main area. On the counter near the kitchenette, she spotted four wine glasses and a broken wine stem. Three of the four glasses were empty. The fourth was filled two-thirds full of white wine. There was an empty wine bottle on the counter. “So the whole group was in this room at one point,” Phi said out loud to break the silence of the room. She snapped overall photos and close-ups of each glass and the wine bottle. Walking back over to her kit, she grabbed a clear container for the remaining wine and her fingerprinting powder, brush, and lift films. Carefully, she poured the leftover wine into the container and twisted the lid closed, labeling the side with a pen. She then dusted and lifted fingerprints off of each of the glasses. She labeled each piece of film displaying the print and put it away to be scanned into the crime lab’s computer system for analysis. “Should probably print the whole group, just to be sure,” Phi said to herself. “Probably don’t need all the bodyguards, except Brian’s, unless someone else cops to being in this room.” Looking at the remains of the broken glass on the counter, Phi pulled her flashlight out of her pocket. She started looking for shards of glass on the counter, then on the floor near the kitchenette. Upon finding none, she got down on her hands and knees and began looking on the carpeted floor. Slowly she worked her way away from where the glasses were found. Near the couch, she started to find shards of glass. She took photos of them and then slowly gathered all the shards with tweezers and collected them in plastic bags. “I wonder what happened here?” she wondered aloud.

Standing up, Phi went back to the glasses and looked at them. “Hm, no lipstick,” she mused out loud. “Where were the wives?” Upon finishing with the glasses and making sure all the evidence was bagged and tagged appropriately, Phi started looking at the sofa there in the main living room of the suite. She found several short blonde hairs that she tweezed off of the couch and bagged. “Couldn’t be the vic,” she commented. “Her hair is longer. Could be Brian or Baylee’s. But it could also be Nick’s.”

After finishing the main area, Phi headed towards the bedroom. Pushing open the door, she saw several things that made her wonder what had gone on there. First and foremost was the painting on the wall. It was tipped sideways and the lamp on the desk was knocked over. “Sign of struggle maybe?” Phi asked out loud as she photographed the abnormalities. Next were the two wine glasses on the nightstand and bottle of merlot. After photographing, dusting for prints and bagging the two wine glasses and bottle, Phi thought out loud, “Two different color lipsticks. Obviously two different women. Probably Leighanne and Kristin. I wonder why the women were sharing a drink back here, while the guys were out in the living room?” 

She jumped when a response came, “Maybe they stayed and partied while the guys went to the show?”

Regaining her composure and turning around to face the voice, she saw that it was Greg standing there. She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Seeing if you need any help.”

Phi shrugged. “Maybe.”

Greg put his own kit down inside the door to the bedroom. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, he looked around the room. “Looks like _something_ happened here,” he commented, indicating the lamp and the photo. Walking over to the desk, he leaned in to examine the surface. Phi walked up beside him and started photographing the disturbance.

“Could be she fought back,” Phi stated.

Greg scoffed. “What? You don’t think this was a suicide?”

Phi shook her head. “No.”

“Why?”

“If she was going to commit suicide, she would’ve done it in her own room.” Phi stepped back. “But if she fought against an attacker, you would think there would be more than just this spot.”

Greg stepped over to his kit and clicked it open. He grabbed a swab and walked back over to the desk. “Well, it looks like something happened on this desk.” He used the tip of the swab to wipe up something on the edge of the desk. “Possible bodily fluids.”

Phi went back to looking around the room. The queen-sized bed was unmade and looked like it had been slept in, but only on one side. She photographed the bed. Standing beside it, she counted only three pillows. “Hey, Greg?” she called, glancing over at her coworker who was dusting the desk with print powder.

“Hm?” he asked.

“Hotels usually give you four pillows, right?”

Greg picked his head up and looked at her. “Every hotel I’ve ever stayed in does.”

Phi spun in a circle and saw a pillow against the wall. Photographing it, she walked over and picked it up. “Wonder why this one is over here?” Bagging the pillow in a paper bag, she looked over at Greg. “What’d you find?”

Greg was now dusting for prints on the wall. “I think I know what happened here,” he said with a grin. “And it wasn’t a fight.”

Phi glanced at him. “Oh?” She went back over to the desk. Greg was lifting a handprint off the wall beside the desk.

“I think someone had a little too much fun,” he said peeling the tape off the wall revealing a perfect left handprint. “I’ve got a left handprint on the wall, and a right one on the desk. I’m thinking the trace I found was seminal fluid. Hubby and his wife obviously had an intimate moment.”

Phi shook her head. “When? He said he never came back to the room after the appearance.”

“So was she having an affair?”

Phi shrugged. “Someone’s lying.” She looked down at the desk. “Did you see the blood drops?” she asked, putting the camera to her eye and focusing on the three round dark spots on the wood.

“No. Nice catch.” Greg reached into his field kit and withdrew another swab to collect the blood sample.

Glancing down at the trash can beside the table, she saw a tissue with red on it. “And I’ve got blood in the trash, too,” she stated. Photographing the tissue and then picking it up carefully with her gloved hand. Greg held open a bag for her to deposit it in.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, leaving her camera around her neck and quickly exiting the room. She walked out into the hallway, where she found Grissom standing with Brass where Brass was taking statements from the members of the band and security detail. Phi didn’t envy him for his task. Walking up beside him, she said, “Hey Brass, a moment?”

Turning around the balding detective in a suit replied, “Sure,” and took two steps over to where Phi was standing.

“So, Nick Carter found the vic, correct?” she asked, wanting to make sure she had her facts straight.

“Yes,” Brass replied.

“Okay, so then what happened?”

Brass consulted his notebook and said, “By what I understand, Mister Carter told his security guard who called the police. As he was doing this, a Misses Kristin Richardson walked by and heard the commotion. She went down to the Littrell’s suite and got the tour manager to open it for her. Inside, she found the boy asleep on the sofa alone. That was about the time the police arrived. She then called Mister Littrell.”

“Okay, thanks Brass,” Phi said, turning towards her boss. “I’m gonna need prints and DNA from all five of them,” Phi told him, indicating the group with her hand. “And his wife,” she said pointing her gloved hand at Kevin. She looked over at Brian, who was once again holding his son. “I’m also gonna need his prints as well.” She started to hear the protests rising from the men near her and turned to them. “Look, guys, it’ll be a whole lot faster if you just cough it up now and leave the lawyers out of it. We are not gonna sell it to the highest bidder. It will stay in-house.” Grissom raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged at him. Passing by him, she said, “Hey, DNA from celebs would bring big money.” As she turned back to head to Brian’s suite, she grabbed a uniformed officer and said, “Tape off this suite too.”

Grissom came over to her before she headed back inside and asked, “Probable cause?”

Phi glared at him. “You know as well as I do that if the vic had committed suicide, she would’ve done it in her own suite.”

“How’d you get access?”

Phi shrugged. “Asked.” She slipped back inside as Grissom headed back to fingerprint and obtain saliva samples from the group. Walking back in, Greg was just finishing lifting all the prints from the desk.

“So you found two wine bottles, right?” he asked, as he was labeling the final tape lifts.

“Yeah, a bottle of red and a bottle of white.”

“Whatever kind of mood you’re in tonight?” he asked, quoting a Billy Joel song.

Phi smiled. “Yeah. Sure seems that way. Seems the guys drink white while their wives drink red.”

Greg put the prints he had lifted into a spot on the side of his kit and headed towards the next room, the bathroom. As he entered, he sniffed the air tentatively. “Do you smell that?” he asked.

Phi followed him inside and also sniffed the air, detecting a faint scent of chlorine bleach. “Do you think someone might have cleaned up?” she asked.

“Well, we didn’t find any blood in the next suite,” he stated. “And it did appear that the victim slashed at least one of her wrists.”

As Phi stepped into the bathroom, she noticed a smear on the doorframe about waist high. Stopping to photograph and collect the evidence with a swab, she let Greg take a look at the room. The smell of bleach was overwhelming to Phi, though she knew it was probably her sensitive nose that made it that way. She stood up and took a step to stand beside Greg, knowing the smell wasn’t that strong to him because he wasn’t reacting to it. “We've got a small smear of blood on the door frame, about three feet off the ground.”

“And a smell of bleach in the bathroom. I think someone tried to cover their tracks,” Greg commented.

“Good thing, I've got track finder,” Phi said, walking back out into the living room and collecting her kit. She brought it back and withdrew a bottle of luminol from it. Greg stood back as Phi sprayed the reactive liquid on the floor and the fixtures in the room, including the bathtub. “No reaction,” Phi said, as she watched the areas she had sprayed.

“There’s a blood smear on the wall,” Greg started, “so there has to be blood somewhere.”

Phi shrugged. “I dunno. I collected Brian’s shirt for processing. It had blood on it.” She paused. “I agree there has to be blood here, but it’s obviously not a lot. You said that David found petechial hemorrhaging right?” Greg nodded. “So that indicates suffocation.”

“She’s a contradiction right now,” Greg said. “Until we get the coroner’s report, we don’t know.”

Phi smiled at Greg. He was right. “Well, I know if I was going to clean up blood, I’d probably try and wash it down the drain.” She looked at the bathtub. “Could you hand me the phenothalene from my kit, please? I think I have an idea.” Greg complied with Phi’s request and also gave her a swab. Watching, she stuck the swab down the drain of the tub and when she pulled it out, she dropped a couple of drops of phenothalene on the tip. They both watched as the tip turned pink. “Positive for blood,” Phi stated.

“So is this our primary?” Greg inquired.

Phi shrugged. “Dunno. It could be and the body was moved from here to the suite next door.”

Greg shook his head. “Why kill the victim here and then move them next door?” Phi shrugged again. “This whole case isn’t making a whole lot of sense right now.”

“Tell me about it,” Phi said. “I’m gonna go check and see if Grissom is done with the group.” Greg nodded as Phi picked up her case and headed towards the door of the suite. As she was stepping across the threshold of the door, something caught her attention in the doorframe. There was a fiber sticking out of the plate. Retrieving her tweezers and a bindle from her kit, she removed the fiber after photographing it and placed it into the small manila envelope. She didn’t know if it was probative or not, but every little piece of evidence collected had the possibility to either convict or exonerate the suspect. As she was getting up from the floor, she happened to catch that a part of the carpet that was a darker color than the rest of the beige rug that covered the room and the nearly golden color that covered the hallway. This was possibly a blood drop on the carpet. Confused as to how to process it, she removed a right angle ruler from her kit and a yellow evidence marker. She then snapped a photo of the spot on the carpet. Upon looking up from her photographing, she spotted another dark spot on the floor about five feet away heading in the direction of where the body had been found. She again used her right angle ruler and another yellow evidence markers to mark the spot. As she was moving towards a possible third spot on the carpet, her supervisor came down the hall and saw Phi squatting down on the floor.

“What've you got, Phi?” he asked.

“Possible blood trail,” she responded calmly. “Directionality indicates that it’s headed in towards where the vic was found.”

“Where does it start?”

“At the doorway. Which I find a little unusual. We found evidence of blood on the doorframe of the bathroom, but no trail to the main door.”

Grissom didn’t look surprised. He had seen too many things to be surprised any more. “Well, we didn’t find whatever was used to slash the vic’s wrist.”

Phi logged that piece of information in her head and continued until the trail stopped at the door to Nick Carter’s suite. It didn’t continue beyond the door frame. “Take a sample of the carpet with the blood on it back to the lab,” Grissom told her as she finished up. Phi nodded as Grissom handed her a box cutter and another bindle. She carefully sliced just beyond the spot on the carpet to save the hotel staff time in having to replace the carpet. “So what do you think?” Grissom asked the young CSI.

“First blush?” she asked. He nodded slightly. “I think the vic was killed in her own suite and then moved next door to Nick Carter’s suite.”

Grissom shrugged. “We’ll see what the evidence tells us.”

As Grissom, Phi and Greg were gathering their equipment and related evidence, an older man with square glasses, wearing a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt, approached them.

“What do you mean we can’t leave?” the man shouted. “We've got a show in Concord on the thirtieth!”

Greg and Phi exchanged looks as Grissom turned towards Captain Brass who was standing near them. “Tour manager, Mitch Stevenson. He’s a little upset because I told them they couldn't leave with an investigation going on.” Grissom nodded.

Brass then held up his hand to the irate man. “Mister Stevenson, I understand your frustration and we’re going to try and get you and your crew out of here as soon as possible.”

“But I thought you said it was a suicide?” Stevenson said.

Phi dared a glance over the tour manager’s shoulder at Brian, who was standing there amidst the rest of the group. She saw him flinch slightly at the word “suicide.”

“We don't know that yet,” Grissom said. “We have to wait for the autopsy results. We still have a lot of unanswered questions that your people can help us with.”

This statement seemed to calm the man down a bit. He backed off and turned on his heel, heading for the group of men behind him.

“Oh, and just to let you know Gris,” Brass added, “this has already hit the press. I don't know how, but they found out about it. And I don't need to tell you about these high profile cases.”

Grissom knew exactly what that meant. It meant that the sheriff had already been notified, along with the new Assistant Director, former daytime supervisor, Conrad Ecklie. Grissom was surprised his cell phone hadn’t rung yet. As if on cue, Grissom's phone rang in his pocket. Upon digging the vibrating and ringing piece of plastic out of his slacks, he read the caller identification name displayed on the phone. It said “Ecklie.” He chose not to answer it and instead pressed a button to silence the noise and tossed the phone back into his pocket. He turned to both young CSIs and said, “We don't get service up here.” They both nodded, accepting the lie and knowing not to give the information out to Ecklie that their supervisor was avoiding his call.

The trio of crime scene analysts and the detective walked down the hallway undisturbed. Things had finally started to calm back down from the chaos that they had walked into back to a normal hotel floor in the middle of the night. As they reached the elevators, Brass said, “We should probably look at escorts or something for you all back to your vehicles. We don't want you being ambushed by the media.”

Phi shrugged, adjusting the three bags she had in her hands. “I’m out in the parking garage. I think I can slip out without being noticed.”

“I’m out there too,” Greg confirmed. “I’ll just follow Phi.”

When the elevator reached the bottom floor, the pair of young investigators split from their older counterparts and headed out through the casino towards the parking garage.

“Taking the long way around, eh, Phi?” Greg asked as the two lugged their bags of evidence and field kits through the casino. They turned right and headed towards the parking garage. “You know, we could have just gone straight out the doors,” Greg added as they reached the elevators.

“I just wanted to get away from Grissom,” Phi said, as she reached over and pushed the up button with a spare finger that wasn’t gripping evidence. “It was my night off.”

“Keyword: _was_,” Greg said as the elevator doors slid open and allowed the two to enter into an empty car. That was one good thing about working graveyard, there usually wasn’t anyone in parking garage elevators. “At least you had clothes in your car.”

Phi shrugged as the doors slid closed. “I always do. And my kit is usually with me in the trunk, just in case. Plus,” she added, looking at the floor, “I kinda figured I wouldn't be able to sit next to Brian Littrell too long.”

Greg turned and stared at her in shock, as the elevator dinged announcing the third floor, the floor that Greg had parked the Denali on. Phi handed over the three bags she had her hand to him as he stood in the doorway of the elevator to keep it from closing on him. “So you were down there with him in the casino?”

“Yeah, don't tell Grissom though. We don’t know what time she died, so I could be his alibi.”

“You got that right.” Greg readjusted the evidence in his hands and stepped out of the elevator doors. “See you back at the lab.”

“Yeah, see ya there,” Phi said as the doors closed.


	3. Chapter Two

Phi took her time getting back to her car. As she walked, she unbuttoned the shirt she had thrown over the concert tee-shirt she had purchased. Underneath the tee-shirt, she wore a white tank top, only because she knew she would be buying the tee shirt there at the concert. As she reached her car, she used her key to unlock the trunk and then put the metal box inside. She needed to restock her luminol when she got back to CSI. Climbing in the car, she knew she had a different shirt in her locker at work, but decided that since Grissom had already seen her in this shirt, she’d better just wear it. Leaving it unbuttoned though, she snapped her seatbelt in place and started her car. She took the long way back to the crime lab on Westfall Avenue. It was normally a ten-minute drive from just about anywhere on the Strip, depending on traffic and time of day, but tonight, Phi hit all the lights and had to wait for them. Tonight, it took her about twenty minutes to get back to the lab.

She parked her car in front of the building and rebuttoned her shirt before opening her trunk to retrieve her kit. She took her time walking into the building, making sure she had her identification badge clipped to her lapel. After saying hello to the receptionist, she walked back towards the locker room to deposit her kit on the designated area in the back of the room. Everybody's kits were different. She slid hers into place next to Greg’s and noticed that Grissom’s was also sitting on the top shelf. She sighed. it was supposed to be her night off, but those were the breaks when working for the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Nights off didn’t always happen and overtime was a given. With having to work graveyard, overtime was a necessity because most things could not be accomplished at night.

She wandered over to the layout room, where Greg had laid out the shirt she had collected from Brian. There were also the clothes from the vic; Phi guessed that they had been delivered from the coroner's office while she had been taking her time getting back to the lab. Greg also had all six wine glasses out of the bags and was swabbing the edges for DNA and other trace elements. The broken pieces were still in the bag. Phi didn’t see the containers of wine that had been leftover in the glass and the bottle, but she figured that those had already been dropped off at the trace lab. “Hey, Greg,” she said, as she walked into the room where Greg was hard at work on a light table.

“Hey,” Greg replied. “What took you so long?”

Phi shrugged. “Oh, I hit all the lights. You know how that is.”

Greg nodded. “I just got the vic's clothes from the corner. Grissom’s over there now photographing the vic and going over initial findings.” Phi nodded.

Noticing the pile of prints sitting on the table, Phi looked at cards and the tape lifts. There must have been a hundred of them. Phi sighed. “I guess I’ll go start scanning in the prints. It's Debbie's night off, right?”

Greg nodded, “Yeah. And there's some stuff in DNA, so you know.”

“Thanks,” Phi replied, stacking up the cards to take with her to the fingerprint analysis lab. She liked tasks that could take a while. It gave her some time to think about what the evidence was starting to look like. Right now, she had no idea what that was.

Walking into the print lab, she laid out all the cards and decided to start with the known prints first. Grissom had taken care of printing the five band members, their bodyguards, Kristin Richardson, wife of band member Kevin Richardson, the vic’s son, and Mitch Stevenson, the tour manager. That in itself led to thirteen ten-cards to scan. Fortunately, they had a very efficient scanner. Phi scanned all the ten-cards in under their assigned case number. The prints would not be entered into AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System unless they were found to be the perpetrator of a crime. Their prints would only be held in the crime lab's system under that case file.

After she finished with all the ten-cards, she started with the unidentified prints that had been tape lifted from various spots in the two suites. As she started scanning the tape lifts, she noted the location each print had been found, the case number and who had lifted the print. While she scanned in the prints from the wine glasses and the bottle in the living room, she ran them against the known prints from the ten-cards and then logged them as whomever they came up. After scanning about fifteen unknown prints, they all came up as someone who was supposed to be in the suite or at least was allowed. So far, she had just run the prints from the wine glasses and confirmed that each one of the Backstreet Boys had had a glass of wine, along with the two wives. One of the strange things that stuck out to her was that Brian’s fingerprints were on every wine glass in the living area along with the wine bottle. AJ’s prints had also come up on the broken wine stem. As Phi continued to run prints found throughout the Littrell's suite, she began to think about this whole wine thing. Hadn’t AJ McLean said he was sober? Back in 2001, there had been this whole thing about AJ going into rehab and the canceled and postponed dates on the Black and Blue tour because of it. it didn’t make sense as to why AJ would have a drink before the show, especially if he was a recovering alcoholic. And why would the group even be giving him alcohol in the first place? They, of all people, knew his history. Maybe that's why no one wanted to talk about it in the media? And if the sharing of the wine had been after the show? Well, that made even less sense. AJ had injured his ankle on stage. Phi had witnessed that. And then, when she had spoken to Brian, AJ had been there in a walking cast, being supported by Howie. Not to mention, Brian had been down in the casino with her during that time. The drinking had to have occurred before the show. And had AJ actually drank the wine? And why was his glass broken? That would have to be left up to DNA and the saliva swabs that Greg was collecting.

Not to mention, there had been a scheduled appearance by the group put on by a local radio station. Brian had said his wife had been there. In fact, Phi had been there as well. Not playing or anything. She hadn’t been lucky enough to win the contest, but she had stood next to Brian Littrell’s wife, Leighanne, and had practically listened in on her conversation as she spoke on the phone. But Phi couldn’t remember the time of that appearance. Could the group have gone back to Brian's suite after the soundcheck, which had been immediately following the appearance? Phi would have to check with the tour manager and the radio station to be sure of the timing. Noting that it was about three-thirty in the morning and not many people would be awake or at work, she decided that she would wait until morning. That was one of the drawbacks of working the graveyard shift. There were just some things that needed daylight to be accomplished, and talking to people was one of them.

All the prints in the Littrell's suite were accounted for. They all belonged to either the band members or their wives. Phi moved on to the prints from Nick Carter's suite. The prints primarily came back to Nick Carter himself. There were a couple of prints that actually came back “unknown” so Phi ran them through AFIS to see if anything came up. Nothing did, so she ran them through the local print index. Everyone who worked in and around the casino had to be fingerprinted. The computer pinged saying that the print had a match. The print came up matching a Vanessa Leonard. It was a work card hit to a waitress at the House of Blues there at the Mandalay Bay. Phi printed out her information and vowed to pass it off to Captain Brass. She knew DNA wouldn’t be back yet, but with the prints all but finished, and only a few not run yet, she decided to go check on Greg and see what he had found.

Gil Grissom stood outside the swinging doors of the morgue. He wasn’t anxious or even impatient. He was just straightening his lab coat that he had thrown on over his clothes. He wandered in and found Doctor Albert Robbins bent over his computer screen, a cup of coffee sitting near the keyboard. The metal crutch Robbins used to get around was leaned against his desk. it was necessary after an automobile accident years ago, but Grissom never questioned it. Robbins's mind was as sharp as it needed to be. He was the graveyard chief medical examiner.

His assistant, David Phillips, came in wearing scrubs and nodded at Grissom. Robbins turned around and greeted Grissom much the way David had. “Here to know about the singer's wife?” he asked Grissom.

“You got anything?” he asked, walking over to the body.

“Maybe.” Robbins grabbed his crutch and ambled over to where a green sheet lay over the blonde woman's body covering everything but her head and shoulders.

Both men stared at the blonde woman for a moment. “She’s a beauty, I’ll say that. Petechial hemorrhaging indicates that she was suffocated.” Robbins held the victim’s right eye, the eye closest to Grissom, so he could see what he was talking about. “I also found fiber in her nasal passage.”

Grissom nodded. This was expected. David had pointed it out at the scene. “So COD is asphyxiation.”

Robbins nodded. He grabbed a pair of forceps and withdrew a white cotton fiber from the vic's nose and showed it to Grissom. “Figure out what this is and you’ll have your murder weapon.”

“What about the lacerations on her wrist? Were they defensive wounds?”

Robbins held up the woman's left wrist to show him. “No. By near as I can tell the veins were transected right to left by an irregular tightly curved blade. But they were done postmortem. See how there is no reaction in the surrounding tissue?” Grissom leaned over to observe what the ME was talking about.

“So you’re ruling out suicide?”

“This was definitely a homicide.”

“Signs of sexual assault?” Grissom asked.

Robbins shook his head. “No. I did find semen in the vaginal vault, but no signs of trauma. Sent a sample to DNA.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Grissom turned to leave but Robbins called him back.

“There was one more thing,” he said.

“What was that?”

Robbins used his gloved hands to move the vic's hair. “There was this abrasion on her scalp. it appears as if she hit her head on something rounded.”

“Like a door frame?”

“That would do it.”

“Is there any indication that she struggled against her attacker?” the CSI asked.

The corner shook his head. “None that I could find. I sent a sample of her blood to tox just in case she was drugged.”

Grissom nodded. “Thanks again, Doc.” Grissom left the coroner's office and climbed back into his vehicle to travel back to the CSI building.

Phi walked into the layout room and saw Greg had small evidence bags laid out. “What's up?” she asked.

Greg shrugged. “Well, I swabbed the blood from the husband's shirt.” Phi nodded. “I also found an errant hair on his shirt.”

Phi cocked her head to the side. “You did?”

“Yeah. It's not blonde like the family's hair is. In fact, it's brunette, like yours. Did you happen to brush up against him when you were down in the casino?”

Phi shrugged. “I might have. Or maybe it happened when I shook my head or something.” She lowered her head into her hands and rested her elbows on the light table. She did not need this spread all over the lab.

“Well, it was your night off. You weren’t expecting to be called in. And you sure weren’t expecting the victim to be married to the man you were gambling with.”

Phi scrunched up her face in disgust. “Yeah, but Ecklie isn't going to see it that way.”

Greg smiled weakly at Phi. “Of course; he never does.” He continued talking to change the subject. “Why do you think this came across as a possible suicide on the call when it so obviously wasn’t?”

Phi shrugged. “Probably from the person who called it in. Saw the body in the tub with the wrist slashed and thought suicide.”

“It’s definitely not a suicide,” Grissom said, walking into the layout room. “Doc Robbins found that the wounds on her wrists were inflicted postmortem.”

“So then what was the cause of death?” Phi asked.

“Asphyxiation.”

“She was suffocated,” Greg intoned.

“More like smothered,” Grissom continued. “He found white cotton fibers in her nose.”

Phi nodded. “That would make sense. The killer probably used one of the pillows from the bed. I found one on the floor.”

“Test it,” was Grissom’s response and Phi nodded.

“Did she fight back? We’ve got evidence of a struggle in the room,” Phi stated.

“What evidence?”

Phi indicated the shards of glass in the clear evidence bag on the table. “Broken wine glass. Plus there was a disturbance in the bedroom. Photos are still printing.”

Grissom looked slightly confused. “The coroner found no evidence she fought against an attacker. Tox has her blood. We won't know if she had anything in her system until the results come back.” Taking in the table and both investigators he added, “Where are you on the physical evidence?”

Phi and Greg exchanged looks. Then, without saying a word, they played a quick game of rock, paper, scissors to determine who would go first. Greg lost, even with Grissom looking on confused and amused at the two young CSIs. To an outsider, this would have looked totally random because there had only been the glances between the two; no words had been exchanged.

Greg heaved a great sigh and said, “I've collected several hairs of the husband's shirt. Sent those off to DNA for possible analysis. Also sent a sample of the blood collected from the shirt to DNA.”

“Well, there was a non-fatal head wound”, Grissom said. “Maybe the vic hit her head there in the suite and the blood is transfer.”

“Maybe,” Greg agreed. “There’s also saliva samples from the wine glasses in DNA. They should match up to the prints.”

“What about the fingerprints?” Grissom asked, turning towards Phi.

Phi shrugged. “I was just heading back there to find out about the last of them. So far, everything came back to what it should be. The wine glasses had the group and their wives prints. So obviously they were all back in that suite at some point. I’m going to call their manager in the morning and find out what time their appearance was. The husband claims he wasn’t in that room after that appearance, so we have evidence placing him in the room, but not a time yet.”

“Anything out of place?”

Phi looked at her boss. “I did get a work card hit on a waitress there at the House of Blues in the Mandalay. Her print was found in the same suite the vic was found in. I’ll have Brass run her down.”

“Good,” Grissom said. “Keep me informed.”


	4. Chapter Three

Phi rubbed her eyes and looked over at Greg. He was staring at a photo through a magnifying glass. “Hey Phi, have we looked at the murder weapon yet?” He picked his head up and looked at her.

Yawning, she replied, “No, not yet.”

“How long have you been awake?”

Phi shrugged. “Not sure anymore.” She walked over and grabbed the bag with the pillow she had collected in it. Slipping a pair of gloves on, she laid out a piece of paper on the table before dumping the pillow on it. Carefully taking the case off the pillow, she laid the rectangular cloth out on the table. She grabbed a magnifier and began looking at the fabric closely. After several minutes of scrutinizing the white pillowcase, she said out loud, “I’ve got epithelials.”

“Let’s get them to DNA,” Greg said, handing her a swab. 

Rubbing the swab against the skin cells, she gathered them on the tip and then put the swab in its container. “I’ll go drop this by DNA and check on our prints and photos,” she said, snapping the latex gloves off her hands. “Maybe the walk will wake me up some.”

“Oh, can you drop this off at trace too?” Greg said, handing her a swab.

“What is it?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I want to know. It was found on the stem of one of the wine glasses.”

“Red or white?” she asked.

“Red.”

Phi nodded. “So the ladies... Hm…” She took the swab from his hand. “Yeah, I’ll drop it off.” Phi walked out of the layout room and down the hall. She stopped by the DNA lab and saw the tech with her head down on a microscope. “Hey, Jenny, any idea when our DNA will be ready?” Phi asked.

Without looking up, the redhead in the lab coat said, “Blood, semen, saliva. You guys have buried me in DNA. It’ll be a while.”

Phi smiled. “Good. Lemme add epithelials to your list too!”

Jenny picked her head up and glared at Phi, who handed over the vial.

Turning on her heel, Phi stepped across the hall. She stopped in the doorway and looked at the tech there, David Hodges. He was staring at a computer screen. “Hodges?” she asked, hesitantly.

Turning to look at her, the dark-haired tech smiled. “Phi, my favorite Greek Letter, what can I do for you?”

Taking a breath, Phi held out the swab for him. “Something else from my case,” she said stoically.

“Ah yes, the singer’s wife. I’ll run it next. Right behind the other trace that was dropped on my desk. Always do the celebs first.” He smiled and then grabbed a paper. “Oh, and the results are back from that fiber you found in the doorframe. It’s a hundred percent cotton in a smoke grey color. Your basic gray undershirt.”

Phi snagged the page from his hands and headed off in the direction of the photo lab. “Thanks for that, Hodges,” she called over her shoulder as she rounded the corner and walked into the lab to get all the photos that had been printed in either a five by seven or eight by ten. She collected all her prints, stacked them up and put them in a manila envelope before she walked over to the fingerprint lab. She printed all the results and grabbed the photo comparisons for every print they had lifted. She also slid this large pile of paperwork into a manila envelope and headed back towards the layout room. On her way, she passed the break room. Sighing, she stepped inside and set her large pile of paperwork and photos down on the table. She then walked over to the small refrigerator under the counter and opened the door. She dug around until she found a diet soda and popped the tab open on it. Sitting down at the table, she rested her head in her left hand, while her right curled around the cold can of soda. What she had told Greg was correct; she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept. It had been at least thirty hours. Not that she hadn’t tried the morning before, but her body wouldn’t shut down. She had wound up relaxing on her couch, watching Discovery Channel until she headed to the show around five that evening.

Phi glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was nearing five in the morning. Sipping the cold beverage before her, she realized this investigation was four hours old. They still didn’t know much except that it wasn’t a suicide. They also knew the vic was suffocated. But they still didn’t know who had done it. She hoped the epithelials she had dropped off at the DNA lab would lead to something. Grissom always said the killer always left something behind and it was up to them to find it.

Phi must have dozed off sitting up because the next thing she knew Greg was poking her shoulder. “Hey. I thought you were bringing our pictures back to the layout room?”

She blinked and looked up at Greg, not realizing her head was on the table in front of her. “Huh?” Sitting up quickly, she rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. Must have dozed off.” She grabbed the can of cola she had been drinking and finished it before standing up.

“No biggie,” Greg said. “You said you hadn’t slept much. I’m just glad I found you and not someone else.”

Walking over to the blue recycling container, she placed her can in it. She then grabbed the stack of stuff she had collected from around the lab building and followed Greg back to the layout room. Entering, she pulled out all the photos and print results. “Oh, Hodges finished with that fiber from the doorframe,” she said, as she started sorting photos by room.

“What was it?” Greg asked as he looked over the photos of the Vic.

“Tee shirt. Grey.”

Greg shrugged. “So who knows if it is even part of this case.”

Phi sighed, as she started tacking up photos from the Littrell’s room. “Yeah. It could’ve been there for weeks. I mean. I know the maids do a good thorough clean, but how often do they scrub the door frames?”

Nodding, Greg continued to look at the photos and hand them over to Phi as she pinned them to two different bulletin boards, one for each room. “Where are we on DNA?” Greg asked.

Phi sighed. “Jenny claims we’ve overloaded her.”

Greg scoffed. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. Having been the DNA lab tech previously, he knew what the workload was.

Phi continued pinning photos to the bulletin boards, trying to make some sense of them. When she finally hung the last one, she looked at Greg and then back at the bulletin boards. “Wow,” she breathed. “We kinda went overkill on the photos.”

Greg shrugged. “Better to be thorough, especially in a case like this.”

Gil Grissom cleared his throat from the doorway. “I’ve been going over the evidence log. Did you locate the item used to slash the victim’s wrist?”

Phi looked up at her boss. “I thought this was a homicide?”

Grissom nodded. “It is. But obviously someone tried to cover that fact up. Did you find the item?”

Shaking her head, Phi stated, “No we didn’t.”

“Go find it,” Grissom stated, looking at Phi. Turning his attention to Greg, he said, “Coroner didn’t find evidence of a struggle, but you found some at the scene. Check the victim’s clothes.” Greg nodded and turned to the evidence bags around the room.

Phi turned on her heel, waved at Greg, and headed out the door. Stopping to pick up her kit, she grabbed the keys to a crime lab Tahoe and a vest. She wasn’t expecting trouble, but being she was at the lab, it was better to go in prepared to a crime scene.

Arriving back at the hotel, she took the elevator up to the floor they had been on earlier and headed down the hallway carrying her field kit. Seeing the officer between the two doors, she waved at him. “Hey, Jeremy,” she said. 

Las Vegas Metro Police Officer Jeremy Yates looked up at the criminalist coming his way. His wavy blonde hair and bright blue eyes gave away his excitement at seeing someone come towards him. His posture, leaning against the wall, head previously down staring at the carpet confirmed to Phi that he was bored in his assignment for the night. “Hi, Phi,” he stated, standing up a little straighter.

Walking over to the door to Officer Yates’ right, she popped a small pocket knife out of one of her vest pockets and sliced at the orange seal on the door. “Any word from hotel management?” she asked as she slipped on gloves before opening the door.

Jeremy shook his head. “No. Not yet. Probably sometime tomorrow or the day after they’ll start jumping on us.”

Phi nodded as she gently pushed the door open. The hotel managers hated their rooms being sealed for evidence in crimes. It meant they weren’t making any money on them. But with this being a high profile case, she figured that everything had been paid for upfront, so maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with the hotel. Pulling out a flashlight from a pocket near the bottom of her vest, she turned it on and left the lights off. She was there on a mission. Knowing that the Littrell’s room was the primary crime scene and that she had found blood in the drain of that bathtub, she had opted to start there to look for the item that had been used to slash the victim’s wrist. Walking around the main area, she thought about what had gone on there. There were wine glasses and an empty bottle. Walking into the kitchenette, she began opening drawers and shining her flashlight in them. She didn’t find much. A few items of flatware, forks, spoons, butter knives. Looking in the cabinets, she found a couple of plates, all untouched. Not finding anything that would intentionally injure anyone, she moved on to the bedroom.

Stopping by the nightstand where she had found the two glasses and the open bottle of merlot, Phi tried to remember what else had been there. There had to be a bottle opener somewhere. How had they gotten the bottles open if there hadn’t? There obviously wasn’t one in the living space. Room service probably would have brought one when they brought the bottles. Phi made a mental note to check with the reception clerks and get a list of the room service orders to this room. It was possible that someone on the tour had brought it in, but it was more likely that someone had ordered room service for the wine.

Not seeing anything else left out that they hadn’t photographed or taken back to the lab, Phi walked the few feet over into the bathroom. Shining the flashlight around the surfaces, she saw nothing that would have done what the coroner had described. There were towels in the towel rack above the toilet and one on the ground in the corner of the room. Phi walked back to her kit and grabbed a paper bag for the towel in the corner. As she was bagging it and writing the label on it, the phone in her pocket rang. The sound made her jump. Capping her pen, she reached for the phone in her pocket. “Phi Mulligan,” she said into it.

“Hey, Phi,” Greg said on the other end, “I’m piecing together that broken wine stem. I’m missing pieces. Can you see if you can find them?”

Phi smiled. “Yeah, I'll look. Anything else you need while I’m here?”

She heard Greg snort on the other end. “Not that I can think of now, no.”

“Good,” she stated and hung up, tucking the phone back into her pocket. Leaning down to put the bag on the ground, she dropped her flashlight to the tile floor. Phi sighed and reached over to grab it. As she did that, she saw where the light was shining. The light was shining through the open bathroom door and under the bed. Phi saw it glint off something metal. Getting down on her hands and knees, she crawled over and reached under the bed. Carefully, she grabbed and pulled the object out and into the light of her flashlight. It was a standard black-handled corkscrew. Holding it by the handles, she shone her light on the tip of the screw. She saw the red dried blood there and smiled. Apparently, whoever had tried to convince everyone that the vic had committed suicide did it with the corkscrew.

Sighing, Phi grabbed a swab from her kit and used it to sample the blood on the tip. She was pretty sure it was going to match their victim, but she knew they needed the swab and the DNA match to prove that. After doing that, she bagged the corkscrew and then walked towards the living area again. Using her flashlight to look around, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. “Sure, Greg, find the rest of the broken glass. Easy,” she commented.

Dropping back down to the floor with her flashlight, Phi scoured the floor looking any glass she may have missed the first time she collected the shards. When her flashlight didn’t catch any glints of glass on the floor, she got up and looked around. “Okay, so there’s no more glass on the floor. Now what?” Phi walked over to the kitchenette. She had found the glasses on the counter. Thinking out loud, she said, “Maybe Greg was right initially. There were no signs of struggle on the victim, so maybe there was no struggle.” Spinning in a slow circle, she saw the couch. Over the back of it was a blanket. On the floor next to it was a toy dump truck. Seeing the toy gave Phi an idea. She walked fully into the kitchenette and over to the sink. Opening the cabinet under the sink, she found a trash can with a bag in it. She grabbed the plastic wastebasket and pulled it out into the small kitchen area. She set it down on the ground and then shone her flashlight in it. After moving around the papers and tissues in the basket, she saw what she was looking for: more glass pieces. Phi smiled. Of course, someone would pick up the glass. There was a child staying in this room. Either the husband or the wife would have picked up the pieces and thrown them away. Carefully pulling out a few bindles from her kit, Phi bagged the glass pieces. She sighed, knowing that there couldn’t have been a struggle before the victim was killed, especially if someone had stopped to pick up the pieces. It did make her wonder what had gone on though. She figured she’d better stop by the front desk and talk to them before she left.

Taking a slow breath, she looked around the room. She had done what she had come for, but something was bugging her. She couldn’t quite place her finger on it. As she was headed to the door, a thought popped into her brain. She should print the back of the door. She wasn’t sure why, but something told her that if someone had been in the room with the vic to kill her, she had probably let them in or they had access to the room somehow. Looking at the door, she knew the doorknob on the outside would be useless. So many people had probably touched that, even inadvertently walking down the hall. But inside the room, she wasn’t so sure of. Walking towards the door, she set her kit down near it. Looking at the doorknob, she knew she was probably asking for overlays, partials and the print lab would probably revolt. But she would do it anyway. She pulled out her black fingerprint powder jar and began dusting the door handle with it. While she was at it, she dusted up the door aways, hoping to catch any stray prints of someone closing the door by the door itself and not the handle. She used several tape lifts to get the prints off the door and the handle. Nothing was super clear and telling, but running the prints through the computer would likely help.

As she finished up, she grabbed the bags of evidence and her kit and headed out the door, closing it behind her. She saw Officer Jeremy Yates was still at his post looking just as bored as he had when she had first arrived. As she was turning around to head towards the elevator, she just about ran into the tour manager, Mitch Stevensen. “Oh, Mister Stevensen, I didn’t see you there,” she stated, readjusting the bags she had with her.

“How much longer is this going to take?” he asked.

Phi shrugged. “I’m not sure, sir. But I’ve been meaning to ask you something anyway. There was an appearance downstairs by the group…”

Mitch nodded. “Yeah, ‘Blackjack with the Backstreet Boys.’ It was put on by a local radio station.”

Phi nodded. “What time was that?”

Closing his eyes for a moment, he tried to remember. “It was like five in the evening. The Sound Check Party was immediately following that.”

“Okay, thanks,” Phi said, tipping her head at the man. She went to walk towards the elevator, but Officer Yates called to her. “What’s up?” she asked.

“You know the vic’s husband,” he said. Phi nodded. “Well, give him a little bit.” Phi didn’t understand what the officer meant until he pointed down the hall. At the end of the hallway, she saw a man in jeans and a black tee-shirt. She couldn’t tell what was on the shirt, but she had a feeling it was the same one she was still wearing underneath her dress shirt. His gait was slow. His head was down. “He’s been making laps since we cleared the scenes and you guys left,” the officer said.

Phi stood by Officer Yates and watched as Brian approached them. His eyes were unfocused and staring at the ground. His shoulders were hunched, his hands barely moved. As Brian approached them, Phi dared to see if he would stop. “Mister Littrell?” she asked.

Brian stopped and looked at Phi. He said nothing.

“Having trouble sleeping?” she inquired. He stared back at her. She nodded at him. “I understand.” She reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Mister Littrell, I promise, I will find out who did this to your wife.” He looked away at the ground. Stepping aside, she let him continue on his way and slowly followed him with her evidence bags and field kit. At the end of the hallway, he turned left around the corner, and Phi pressed the button on the elevator. She turned and looked at his back as he slowly ambled down the short hallway and made another left turn around the corner. She heard an audible ding and the doors to the elevator slid open. Sighing, she stepped inside. She could see where Captain Brass would say that Brian’s behavior was out of the ordinary. 

Once down in the lobby, she headed over towards the reception desk. A pretty blonde woman with shoulder-length hair wearing a blue blazer and a golden name tag that said, “Heather” on it, greeted her. “Anything I can help you with?” she asked.

“There is actually.” Phi put her case between her feet and the bags on top of it. “My name’s Phi Mulligan. I’m with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. I was wondering, can you tell me how many keys you gave out to a couple of rooms?”

“Would this be the VIP floor?” she asked.

“It would.”

Heather, the clerk, looked at her computer screen. “Under any other circumstance, I wouldn’t be able to give you that information.”

“I understand. But it would be helpful if I didn’t have to go get a warrant for the information I need.”

Heather nodded and said, “Which rooms?”

Phi smiled. “Seven fourteen and seven sixteen. And it would be helpful if I could get the room service log for seven fourteen as well.”

“Give me just a second,” she said, punching some buttons on her keyboard. “Okay, the room service log is printing. And as for keys, we usually only issue two keys per room. But in the case of this VIP tour, we issued two keys for all rooms except seven fourteen and seven twenty. Those two rooms we issued three keys.” Heather turned around to her printer and grabbed the sheet off of it and slid it across to Phi. “Hang on a second and I’ll print you the key list as well. We don’t have who was issued the keys because these rooms were block reserved under the management company, but it will tell you how many keys were issued per room.”

Phi flashed her best grin at the clerk. “Thank you so much, Heather.” The clerk slid the paper across the counter. “Out of curiosity, is there any way to tell which key was used in the door?”

“It may be a VIP floor, but it ain’t the penthouse suite,” Heather replied. 

Phi nodded, understanding that there wasn’t going to be a way to tell who had entered the room, but she had a hunch why those two rooms were issued three keys. She was turning away and heading towards the exit when her cell phone rang again. Glancing at the caller ID, she saw “Grissom” written there and answered swiftly. “Yes?”

“Have you left the scene yet?” Grissom asked.

“I’m downstairs in the lobby checking on something,” she answered.

She heard Grissom sigh on the other end. “Good. I’ve sent the stage manager that way. He’s got something we need. Name’s Sean Cooper.”

“And he knows to look for me?”

“He does.”

“What is it?”

There was a pause. “Apparently he takes copious notes.”

Phi grinned. She knew her boss wasn’t going to give anything away until she got back to the lab. “Okay,” she replied. He hung up and so did she. As she was tucking her phone away, a man with short dark hair wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, even though it was nearly six in the morning, walked towards her.

“Are you with the crime lab?” he asked hesitantly.

Nodding, Phi replied, “I am.”

The man appeared shaken. “I’m Sean Cooper. I’ve been speaking with a Mister Grissom about the show last night.” He took a ragged breath. “He said he wanted my timings.” He held out a paper. It shook in his hand.

“Thank you, Mister Cooper,” Phi told him, taking the paper from his hands.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, instantly relaxing, now that he had completed the task. He turned on his heel and headed back in the direction from whence he had come. Phi glanced down at the paper in her hand. It appeared to be a setlist from the show earlier that evening but with numbers noted by every song. Phi wasn’t entirely sure what Grissom wanted with the setlist, but knew the sooner she got back to the lab, the sooner she would find out.

Phi walked inside the building carrying what she had collected from the hotel. She took it all with her to the evidence locker to be logged before taking it with her to the layout room. With this being a high profile case, they were actively working the evidence, so none of it had made it back to storage yet. She dropped her case off in the locker room and then headed directly to where she knew Greg and probably Grissom was. Walking into the room, she saw Greg and Grissom with their heads together, looking at a couple of pieces of paper.

“Okay, got your broken wine glass,” she said, handing Greg a bag as if it were an order from a restaurant. “And your setlist from the stage manager, Grissom.” She handed Grissom the paper.

“What else did you find?” the supervisor asked.

Phi shrugged. “Fingerprints on the back of the door. I’ll drop those off. Mandy isn’t going to like me very much. There’s probably a bunch of partials.” She set the tape lifts off to the side “Oh, and I found the corkscrew used to open the bottles of wine.” She pulled the plastic bag out of a larger paper bag. “It had blood on it.”

Grissom nodded. “Used to slash the victim’s wrist, possibly?”

“That’s what I thought,” she stated. “If the DNA comes back to the vic, then her hotel room has got to be the primary and she was moved. I found it under the bed.”

“Very good, Phi,” the older man said.

“So what have you found out while I was out finding a key piece of evidence?”

Greg smiled and swept his hand at the four wine glasses and the one broken stem. “DNA came back on the glasses.”

Phi raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Greg laid out the fingerprints next to each labeled glass. “Here are the glasses you labeled and the identifying fingerprints.” Phi looked down the line. The glass labeled “A” had Kevin Richardson’s prints on them. “B” was Nick Carter. “C” was Brian Littrell. “D” was Howie Dorough. “E” wasn’t officially labeled through fingerprints as Alex McLean, but there was still a note there. “Your partials on the last glass couldn’t be a hundred percent matched, but it was close enough to call,” Greg said. Phi nodded. “So, DNA was found on glasses A, B, and D. DNA matched the fingerprints on those three glasses. Wine was found in glass C.”

Phi leaned over the table, her dark hair finally starting to escape the bun she had hastily put it in back when she first went to the crime scene. She placed her elbow in front of her and leaned her chin on her hand, examining the glasses. “So three of the five guys actually drank the wine,” she said.

Greg nodded. “Yep. Still, no reason for the one glass to be broken though.”

Phi stood back up and looked at her boss. “Why did you want the setlist?”

Grissom was reading the paper Phi had handed him through his glasses. On the table in front of him was a file folder sitting open. “You were at this show, right?” Phi nodded. “Did you happen to notice the time it started and ended?”

Phi shrugged. “No. No clocks in the arena. And I wasn’t exactly checking my watch,” she commented with a smile.

“Well, thankfully their stage manager takes notes.” He set the paper down next to the file folder. “While you were gone, coroner nailed time of death to ten-thirty.”

“So David was right when he gave us two to three hours initially.”

Grissom nodded. “It also eliminates a good portion of our suspects.”

Phi cocked her head and looked down at the setlist. The numbers next to the songs finally started to make sense. Next to the encore was the number “1042.” Nodding, she smiled. “His numbers are times!” Grissom nodded again. “So anyone who was on that stage or working around it at ten-thirty couldn’t have killed her.”

“So we eliminated half the tour,” Greg stated.

Allowing it all to sink in, Grissom turned to the two young investigators. “We now know who _didn’t_ do it.”


	5. Chapter Four

Greg Sanders sighed and put his head in his hand.

“What is it, Greg?” Phi asked her colleague.

Greg looked up at Phi. “Okay, so the wine glasses in the living area were the men and the wine glasses in the bedroom are the wives.”

“Is that confirmed?”

Greg laid out two sheets of paper. “Fingerprints and DNA. Not to mention lipstick colors.” Phi smiled. “We still don’t know what that white substance is on the vic’s wine glass though.”

“Hodges still isn’t back with it yet?”

Shaking his head, Greg replied, “Nope.”

“I know that’s not what’s bugging you,” Phi said.

Greg shook his head. “No, that’s not that at all.” He looked up at Phi. “We lost our two best suspects in one fell swoop.” Tipping her head and looking at Greg sideways, Phi waited. Throwing up his hands, he said, “It can’t be the husband or the guy who found her.”

Phi nodded. “Husband, and first on the scene, always the first suspects.” Taking a breath, Phi said, “Sometimes finding the suspect isn’t as easy.”

“You never thought it was one of them, did you?” Phi shook her head. “Why?”

Shrugging, Phi answered, “Call it ten years of fandom. I’ve followed them since the beginning. I’ve never met them until now. It’s never how I wanted to meet them; through my job not theirs. But I saw them during the height of their popularity. Their kind of cresting now. It’s been a few years since then. But they appear to be as down to earth as they are in interviews.” Phi walked around the large light table and looked at the glasses laid out there. “Brian loves his family. He’d never do anything to hurt them. And the rest of the guys wouldn’t hurt Brian in that way. So no, I _never_ thought of any of them as suspects. I was just waiting for the evidence to clear them.”

“Well, they’re cleared now and we’re still at square one,” commented the male investigator.

Staring at the glasses, Phi commented airily, “Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

Phi pointed to the two wine glasses with lipstick on them. “What about Kristin Richardson? Have we looked at the evidence surrounding the last person to see the vic alive?” Greg tipped his head to the side and nodded.

Gil Grissom had been standing in the hallway outside the layout room listening to the two investigators. They both may have been young and somewhat inexperienced, but they were at least looking at the evidence. He figured now was as good a time as any to impart some wisdom on the young investigators. He didn’t think they would intentionally jeopardize the case, but he had to be very careful with what they did and who they interviewed.

Walking into the layout room, he stopped at the end of the table and looked as both CSIs looked up at him. “You guys sound like attorneys,” Grissom stated. “Don’t focus on the suspects, focus on the evidence.” Greg and Phi exchanged a look that said they were off base. “What is out of place?

Phi held up her hands. “There’s stuff still pending. We don’t know what was on the vic’s wine glass. All the DNA isn’t back. Most of the fingerprints are though, with the exception of what I found earlier.”

“You got a work card hit on one of those prints, right?” Grissom asked Phi.

“Yeah, a Vanessa Leonard, waitress at the House of Blues.” Grissom stared at her for a moment. Phi realized he was waiting for her to finish. Not sure what Grissom wanted, she added, “You should have Brass bring her in.” Nodding, Grissom turned and walked away.

Phi sighed and looked over at Greg. “Guess we got told, huh?” Greg smiled as Phi headed over to the wall to look at photos of where the vic was found.

Gil Grissom stood outside the small interview room leaning against the wall near the door. He watched as Detective Brass walked a young woman in jeans and a House of Blues tee shirt down the hall towards him. Her wavy red hair was pulled up in a ponytail that swished as she walked. She headed into the room with the detective behind her. Grissom followed and closed the door behind everyone. Grissom slowly walked around the table, holding the file folder close to his body. He lowered himself into a chair across the table from the waitress with Brass sitting next to him.

“Vanessa Leonard?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

Grissom set the file folder down in front of him. It was brown and embossed with the Las Vegas Crime Lab seal. “Where were you last night?”

Vanessa folded her hands in front of her. “Working.” Grissom stared at her. “You can ask my manager. I was working the seven to two shift.”

“Did you get a break last night?”

Rolling her eyes, she answered, “Yeah. Around ten, why?”

“Have you ever been up to the seventh floor?”

Vanessa shrugged. “I’m sure I have.”

“What about last night?” Grissom kept his tone even.

“I told you already. I was working.”

Grissom very slowly opened the file folder in front of him. “Then tell me how your fingerprints wound up in room seven sixteen.”

The girl across from him stared. “It’s not what you think,” she said quickly. “I know a housekeeper.”

_“You know I could get fired for this, right?” the housekeeper whispered. She wore a light green uniform and pushed a cart. Even though it was about ten at night, and she wasn’t supposed to be on duty, she looked the part for her friend. _

_Vanessa stood by her friend, trying not to look suspicious. “I know. I could get fired too,” she whispered back._

_The housekeeper looked down the hallway in each direction. She slid the card into the card reader on the door. When the light above it turned green, she turned the doorknob. “Just a quick peek, okay?”_

_Vanessa held up her hands. “I promise.” She stepped across the threshold into the dark room. Standing just inside, she ran her fingers over the wall. She tiptoed further into the suite and placed her hands on the small table nearby._

_“‘Nessa, come on!” the housekeeper ferociously whispered._

_Vanessa turned around and headed out of the suite. She closed the door behind her and the pair of women walked down the hall together. “Thank you,” Vanessa whispered as they walked._

_“You owe me big time! Sneaking you into Nick Carter’s suite.”_

“Around what time was that?” Grissom asked.

“On my break. Like I said. Around ten. Check with my manager.”

Nodding, Grissom replied, “Don’t worry, I will. And we’re going to need your friend’s name.”

Grissom told Brass to follow up with the friend, a Sandy Ratcliffe, and then called Greg. “Hey, Greg, see if you can get the manager at House of Blues to send over a copy of last night’s staffing with breaks.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Greg replied and hung up to call the restaurant.

Grissom had barely put his phone away when it rang. Seeing the ID said “Ecklie,” he figured he’d better answer it, knowing he couldn’t avoid the assistant director forever. “Yes, Ecklie,” he said with a bored tone.

“Have you been checking on the evidence your trainee’s collected?” Ecklie asked.

Grissom sighed and kept his voice level. “They’re not trainees, Conrad. Both have passed their proficiencies.”

“But have you checked on them recently?”

Closing his eyes, Grissom stopped walking in the hall of the police station. “Yes, I have.”

“Then you already know about the errant hair Sanders found on the vic’s husband…” It was more of a statement than a question, but Grissom heard the tone of Ecklie’s voice.

Not wanting to give away that he knew nothing of the hair or what he was talking about, he simply replied, “What about it, Conrad?”

“I want to see Mulligan in my office.”

Grissom blinked at the statement and said he would pass that information along. Hanging up the phone, he decided to get back to the lab and his office before he called Phi. He wanted to see this report that Ecklie was talking about for himself.

Phi leaned her head in Grissom’s office door. “You wanted to see me?” she asked.

Grissom looked up from the file he was reading. He pulled his glasses off his nose and set them down on the desk in front of him. “Ecklie wants to see you. Something about an errant hair?” He raised an eyebrow at Phi.

Sighing, she stepped inside his office and closed the door. She walked over to the chair in front of his desk and sat down. She ignored the glass bottles around the room containing various creatures and specimens. “You know it was my night off last night, right?” she started, not sure how she was going to break this to her boss.

“Yes.”

“Well, I was already at Mandalay when you paged. I was in the casino.”

Grissom set the file folder down in front of him. “Doubling your paycheck?”

Phi sighed again and ran her fingers over her eyes. “I hate how you know everything.”

“So you were gambling. That doesn’t explain why Ecklie wants to see you.”

Phi leaned back. “I was at the high stakes table, next to the vic’s husband.”

Grissom folded his hands and looked at the young CSI before him. “Phi, what time was this?”

Shaking her head, Phi said, “Like half an hour before you paged.” She leaned forward. “I’m not his alibi. You said the coroner nailed TOD as ten-thirty. This was well after. Besides, I thought we cleared the band?”

Grissom stood up. “We did. Let’s go see Ecklie. I have a feeling I know what he’s going to ask.”

Assistant Director Conrad Ecklie’s office was much neater and more business-like than Grissom’s specimen filled museum. Ecklie was sitting behind his desk, also reading a file when Phi and her supervisor entered. He was a bald man with dark hair above his ears. He was wearing a dark-colored shirt and maroon tie. He looked up from his file when Phi entered. “Mulligan, we need to talk,” he stated, addressing Phi by her last name.

Phi said nothing. Grissom stepped in front of her. “What do you need to talk about?” he asked Ecklie.

“This errant hair Sanders found on the husband’s shirt,” the director said, holding the file in one hand.

“What about it?”

“She needs to recuse herself from the case.”

Phi took a deep breath, preparing to say something to the director, but Grissom cut her off. “Over a hair? You’re reaching Ecklie.”

“So how’d it get there?”

Grissom looked over at Phi. His look told her everything she needed to know; keep it simple. “I sat next to him at a table in the casino.”

“All the more reason for you to recuse yourself from this case, Mulligan. You were with the suspect.” Ecklie’s voice was beginning to rise in volume.

Phi closed her eyes and took a breath. She really wanted to roll her eyes but knew it would piss Ecklie off more.

Grissom shook his head and said softly, “Everyone in the band has been cleared, Conrad. The husband didn’t do this.”

Ecklie looked up at the graveyard supervisor. “If we can’t get a conviction because of this…” he started to say but Grissom cut him off.

“We’ve got to catch the killer first,” was Grissom’s comment. “Come on, Phi.” He turned and placed a hand on Phi’s shoulder leading her out of his office. Once they got around the corner from Ecklie’s office, he stopped the young CSI. “Next time, tell me about this, okay?”

Phi turned to face him. “Would you have let me work the case?”

The question hung there in silence as Greg approached with a paper in his hand. “Hey, DNA is back on the husband’s shirt.” He handed the paper to Grissom, who scrutinized it.

“The blood is his?” Grissom asked.

Greg nodded. “Yeah. Matched the blood on the tissue.”

Phi stared at Greg. “I think I know what happened,” she said, snagging the paper from Grissom and taking off for the layout room. Grissom and Greg followed Phi as she raced down the hall. In the layout room, she grabbed the photos of the lopsided picture, the lamp, the blood drops. She also grabbed the bag containing the tissue and laid it next to the photos. She placed the DNA results from Brian’s shirt next to the other paper that was the DNA results they had gotten earlier on the sample they had lifted from the desk. Last, she placed the two handprints Greg had lifted on the table. Finally satisfied with having all the evidence laid out in front of her, she took a breath and looked up at two men. “It’s like you said back in the suite, Greg. Brian and his wife had sex here.”

_Brian opened the door to his room and found his wife alone in the bedroom laying out Baylee’s pajamas for after his bath later. Walking up behind her, he wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing her neck. “Hey Baby,” he said into her ear._

_Leighanne spun around in his arms. “What are you doing back here? Don’t you have a show to do?”_

_Brian planted his lips to his wife’s and slowly started walking her back towards the desk. “This is me, apologizing for being an idiot. And yes, I do have a show, so we don’t have a lot of time.” He picked her up and carefully placed her on the edge of the desk._

“So they had sex,” Greg stated. “Where does his blood come from?”

Phi smiled. “The Littrell’s live in Atlanta.” Both men stared at her dumbfounded. “Desert heat is different from the humid heat. I bet he wound up with a nosebleed from his quickie with his wife.”

Greg nodded. “Okay. Blood drops, bloody tissue.” He looked over at the evidence Phi laid out. “But what does it prove?”

“It proves that he lied to me.”

Brian sat across the metal table from Phi, his hands folded in front of him. He said nothing, just stared at her. The cold grey walls made his blue eyes seem even sadder than what they already were. If Phi wasn’t there for such a difficult task, she’d probably be bawling. Phi took a breath and began her interrogation. “Mister Littrell, where were you before the appearance the group had in the casino?”

Brian blinked rather slowly before answering carefully, “My hotel room.”

“Who was with you?” Phi asked quietly.

Shaking his head slightly, he replied, “The guys.”

Letting the answering hang there, she followed with, “Did you and your wife ever fight?”

Brian wrinkled his brow. “Yes,” he answered. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Have you fought recently?” Phi asked, ignoring his question.

“Maybe,” Brian shrugged.

Phi stood up and leaned forward, placing her hands on the table. “Why are you lying to me?” she asked.

Brian didn’t move, didn’t flinch. “What do you mean?”

“You did go back to your room after the appearance.” Brian continued to stare at her. “See, before the appearance, you and the guys were sharing a drink. There’s a room service charge for a bottle of chardonnay. But you weren’t expecting your wife to show up.”

_Brian opened the door and let his four bandmates into his suite. “Hey guys!” he said. “Come on in.” He had already opened the bottle of chardonnay he had ordered and began pouring the glasses._

_“Uh, Bri,” AJ started to say._

_Brian shook his head. “Just toast with us, man. You don’t have to drink it. It’s not often we get to Vegas.”_

_Nick smiled at AJ as he took his own glass. “Remember, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”_

_As the guys raised their glasses in a toast to the upcoming evening, the door opened. In walked Leighanne Littrell, shopping bags hanging off one arm. She stopped right inside the door as it closed. Seeing AJ first with the glass in his hand, she yelled, “What are you doing?” She stormed across the floor and slapped the glass out of his hand, knocking it to the floor. The wine splashed across the floor, the glass shattering as it hit the tile. Howie, Nick, and Kevin, all tipped their glasses back into their mouths and drained them before setting them down on the counter and slipping out the door. AJ was right behind them._

_“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Leighanne continued, this time at her husband._

_Brian set his glass down on the counter untouched. “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady._

_Leighanne shook her head. “Giving Alex a drink? Have you lost your mind?”_

“So you two had a fight before the appearance,” Phi stated. “You then went downstairs and put on a smile like nothing had happened.” Brian just sat there staring at the investigator before him. He didn’t glance over at the detective in the corner. “Do you ever get nosebleeds, Brian?” she asked.

Brian blinked. “No.”

Phi leaned back to stand upright on her side of the table. “You are from Georgia, right?” Brian nodded. “It’s pretty humid down there.”

“Yeah…” he stated.

Phi reached down under the table beside her and pulled up a plastic water bottle and set it on the table in front of him. “See, you really need to hydrate when you come here to the desert, especially if you are going to be involved in…” she paused trying to find the right words, “vigorous activity.”

“I don’t understand where you are going with this,” was his reply.

Phi smiled slightly. “You left me the crime scene trifecta on the desk in your room: handprints, blood, and semen.” She wouldn’t have noticed the slight changes in his features when she said that if she hadn’t been staring directly at him. His breath caught in his throat and his eyes dilated ever so slightly. “You did go back to your room after the appearance.”

Brian sighed and closed his eyes. “Yes, after soundcheck.”

“To make up?” 

Brian nodded. “Yeah.” He closed his eyes momentarily at the memory. “It’s so hard to have any time together with a toddler running around all the time.” Phi smiled. “I surprised her back at the room. Thankfully Baylee was off with Kristin at the time. We made up and I went off to the show.”

“Why did you lie to me?” Brian just stared at her. She could see the answer in his eyes before he said anything.

“Because they always look at the husband first,” he said, tipping his head towards Detective Brass in the corner.

Phi nodded. It was customary to look at the husband first when the wife was murdered. “Can I ask you something?” Brian nodded. “Have you canceled the tour yet?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not yet.”

“Get it canceled.”

Brian blinked. “Why?”

Phi sighed. She cocked her thumb towards Brass in the corner. “He may not have seen a grieving husband like you, but I have.” 

Brass looked over a Phi quizzically. “Who?” the detective asked.

Phi sank back down into the chair. “My dad.” Brian stared at her, waiting. “After my mother committed suicide when I was fifteen, he was in a near-catatonic state, like yourself. Hardly spoke. Didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. It finally hit him after nearly two weeks. Some song had come on the radio. He said it was the one they danced to at their wedding. He lost it, bad.” Phi closed her eyes at the memory. “You don’t want that to happen on stage in front of the fans. Trust me. You need your time. Cancel the tour.” He nodded at her, realizing what she was saying. “We’re done here,” she stated, pushing the chair back from the table and standing up.

Brian stood up with her and watched as Brass came around the table towards him. “We’ll pick up your muscle and sneak you out the back door, Mister Littrell,” Brass said, holding the door open for him.

Standing in the silent room, Phi looked at the table. She wasn’t quite ready to leave yet. She had to pull herself back together. She didn’t hear anyone enter, so the voice made her jump. “Giving yourself away?” Phi looked up and saw Catherine Willows standing in the doorway. Phi shrugged and walked towards the swing shift supervisor.

“Not really.”

Phi walked out the door and into the hallway next to the blond woman. “You know, you’re the only one he’s spoken to.”

Phi tipped her head. “Really?”

Catherine nodded. “Yeah. According to the reports, no one can get him to say anything, except you. And he only looks at you when you are around.”

Phi looked down at the ground beneath her feet before looking back at Catherine. “How do you know?”

Catherine stepped beside Phi. “Trust me, we all know about this case.” She slid an arm across the young woman’s shoulders as they started to walk out of the station together. “And I watched him in there. He never took his eyes off you.”

Phi stopped at the corner and spun to look at Catherine. “So, what, giving him that piece of information about myself was wrong?”

Catherine shook her head. “No. It was probably the best thing you could have done at the moment. He has a connection with you, for whatever reason. Use it.”

Phi nodded. “Thanks.” She turned and headed down a hallway, searching for the back exit. She didn’t dare trust herself heading out the front and dealing with the media that had gathered there at the station.


End file.
